Just finished reading The Interestings. With a title like this, I think that there is a level of expectation that the reader has when they start reading it. Did this book live up to the expectation? The short answer is no.
This book is about a group of teenagers who meet at a camp called Spirit-In-The-Woods, it's kind of an artsy type camp with dancing, animation, instruments, acting, that kind of thing. They form a group that meets in Boys Tepee 3 where they talk and get high with each other and decide to call themselves "The Interestings" because they are so interesting. It basically follows them into adulthood and tells what has happend to these young people once they grew up and went into the real world. I like the time frame that the author chose which was from the 70's to the present day. The history between those times is awesome.
The first 20-25% percent of this book was very dull to me. It was hard to push through that first part. I will say, I finished this book. It was hard for me, but I don't believe you've given a book a chance until you've read the whole thing. To me, if you've only read 65% percent of a book and "could not possibly finish" you have not given it a chance, and therefore have no right to complain nor review about it, but thats just my opinion, so who cares? Case and point: literally about 65% of the way through, the book got interesting...No pun intended. Around 45% of the way through, I was prepared to give it a 1 star because of the incredible dullness of it. The book seemed to go through levels: dull, moderately boring, a little bit less boring, good. In that order.
I think the thing that drove me insane and made me want to throw my Kindle across the room was the authors continuous use of the characters last names. Okay, I get it their names are Ethan Figman, Ash Wolf, Jules Jacobson, Goodman Wolf, Cathy Kiplinger, and Jonah Bay. I've seen authors do this before, but never to this extreme. "Jonah Bay thought..." "Ethan Figman did...." uggghhh! Enough! I will not forget the last names of these charactors because the author would not let me! Just for grins, I had my Kindle search for the words Ethan Figman and it shows up 86 times. I know there was more too because it didn't go through to the end of the book.
Another thing I didn't like about this book was the time changes. I've read many books where we shift in time between the past and the future. This can be a difficult thing for an author to pull off successfully sometimes, but this author did not do a great job of it at all. When you're writing with time shifts, it HAS to flow well or the reader can get frusterated. Just saying....
There was also a lot of rambling in this book. There were times that there just paragraphs of what the charactor was thinking, or the author was making comparisons to something, just rambling on and on and on. I don't know about you, but when I read a book, there HAS to be enough dialogue to keep me hooked. I think this is why the end was so much better for me. Because there was a lot more dialogue between the characters and a little less rambling. It made it extremely hard for me to get through it.
One of the characters, Jules was OBSESSED with Ash and Ethan's success. I'm talking obsessed, it was annoying to me the way she always thought of their money and compared it to the way her and her husband were living. I think its safe to say we've all done this, it's human. It's part of life and if you're sitting there shaking your head saying you've never done it, you're lying. It's healthy, and its okay. Jules was obsessed and I think my favorite part of the book was when her husband basically said ENOUGH WITH IT ALREADY! Jules was always very grateful to be able to fit in with the "privileged" kids, although Ethan was not privileged growing up. Jules had very low self-esteem and was afraid to really talk a lot in fear that these kids wouldn't be her friend anymore because she wasn't as "cool" and "privileged" as they were. Which is understandable when you're a teengaer, but it continued on the whole story, even when Jules was fifty something. She would talk, but there was always the fear in her head that Ash would not want to be her friend anymore. When your that age, and a person is still considered your best friend, I think it's safe to get a little more comfortable that the relationship will continue.
And the last thing I didn't care for was the way the chracters talked or their thoughts. Completely unrealistic! How many times, when arguing with your significant other do you say "I do not like this current state of yours." ???? Anyone? Not me....Although maybe I should try this out on my husband just to see what his reaction would be. Also when you're thinking in your head do you think "This is a moment of strangeness."? You don't? Neither do I.
There weren't very many things I did like about the book, but I did like how the author talked about different historical things that happend in those times. Nixon, hippies, the WTC. That kind of stuff is really interesting to me, and I also liked the end of the book, I thought where it ended was the perfect place to end it. Anyone who knows me knows that I'm very picky about endings.
So in the end, out of five stars, I think I would give this book 2 1/2 stars due to the end actually being pretty good. Now bear in mind that this book has A LOT of good reviews on Amazon so if it's something you think you would like to read, then read it. Your opinion may be way different then mine. Happy reading!
Next book: Red Lory
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